Charles wrote:
>I think Phill identifies the issues here fairly clearly, although I would
>note that hte question of what is a reasonable approach for the US might
not
>work so well in other countries, where the markeyt for and range of
assitive
>technologies is much more limited. We should bear this in mind if we are
>writing guidelines for a world wide web consortium
Although the "market for" English versions of assistive technologies may be
lower in other countries, [not everyone reads or wants English] most if not
all assistive technologies available in the U.S. are also available world
wide, just not available in the national language. So where are the
guidelines for assistive technology developers to "translate" their
offerings? Wouldn't it be more practical to "translate" the assistive
technologies than to write guidelines that get added to legislation
requiring all pages to be usable without such technologies in the national
language? The "making accessible" of existing governments web pages alone
in each country could probably pay for the translation costs.
Regards,
Phill Jenkins,
IBM Accessibility Center - Special Needs Systems
11501 Burnet Rd, Austin TX 78758 http://www.ibm.com/able